


Highly Trained

by veracities (Lir)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Covert Operation, Dancing, M/M, Minor Injuries, Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-26 13:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7576231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/veracities
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oikawa plans on whiling away an evening at a fancy gala as a cover for a mission. He does not plan on running into his old partner, Kageyama. But Oikawa is a highly trained operative who is also very, very good at his job, and it's the least he can do to improvise and handle the situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Highly Trained

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the 2016 [sports anime shipping olympics](https://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/), an event which dragged me kicking and screaming into finally writing for this, the singular ship in haikyuu I love enough to ever write a fanfic about. This is technically the first time I've ever written Oikawa, or Kageyama, so please: be gentle with me.

* * *

Oikawa breezes through the high double doors to the ballroom, allowing the sound of the orchestra's playing to wash over him like a tide. It's a slower rhythm than the up-tempo drumming of his heart; he takes a breath in, spreads a smile across his lips, and consciously wills the beating of his pulse to slow toward the pace of the music.

It's almost as if he'd never had a run-in with the security inside the building next door at all. 

But there's still too much adrenaline pumping in his veins, too much vigilance playing upon his nerves and keeping him on high alert. At any moment he might hear the wail of police sirens speeding toward the crime scene, the shout of authorities breaking up the party with warnings of a theft in the area. There's always the _possibility_ of an error, of interference, of the job going badly amiss. 

It's a possibility, but that doesn't mean it's anything like _highly probable._ Oikawa is a highly trained operative, and he is very, very good at his job. He has ensured as much, through rigorous training, constant awareness of his surroundings, and intense attention to detail. Oikawa Tooru does not _make_ mistakes. 

But sooner or later, the authorities will be made aware of the intel that's been transferred, copied, and Oikawa — a tourist from Japan very much enjoying his trip to Italy — will have been enjoying a fantastic party for the entire evening. He'll be less than a suspect; he will be a veritable non-entity on the radar of the Italians, blissfully unaware of matters of state being carried out next door, just under his ignorant little tourist nose. 

Oikawa flashes another smile, more to remind his mouth of the motion to it than anything else, and thrusts himself into the milling, laughing, dancing whirl of party-goers in search of someone to while away the night with... While simultaneously cementing his cover story, lest he be forced to confront local law enforcement against all the odds. 

He takes two steps forward, a sway in his hips and that too-bright smile on his lips, before sliding to a stop that's only a _little_ unnatural before a familiar face, a familiar black head of hair, that too-familiar puckered-in expression when the man in question lays eyes on Oikawa and recognition dawns. 

"Tobio-chan!" Oikawa says, striding another two steps forward to take dear Tobio by both hands. There's a warmth in his voice that he's the leading expert in faking, a light catching behind his eyes that he ignites by sheer force of will alone. 

Of everyone Oikawa might have expected to see in Florence, Kageyama Tobio is at the very bottom of the list.

(On a list of everyone Oikawa might have _liked_ to meet in Florence, Kageyama Tobio ranks lower still than that; if Oikawa could force his esteem into the negatives through stubbornness alone, it would be done.)

"Oikawa-san," Tobio says, and there's less surprise in his voice than Oikawa is expecting. He's getting better, then. Less sloppy than little Tobio-chan was the last time they met. 

"It's been a long time, hasn't it?" Oikawa asks. 

Tobio pauses, just a beat, just a breath — better, better, less stiff than he used to be — before nodding his agreement. "It has been. I wasn't expecting you to be here." 

"Nor I you!" Oikawa says, and laughs. He laughs high and bright, his hand moving to clasp Tobio's shoulder, his teeth doubtlessly winking in the room's multifaceted light. "There's so much we have to catch up on." 

Oikawa doesn't _want_ to spend the evening with Tobio, he tells himself quite sternly. Tobio is the worst kind of wet blanket, too stiff and never any fun at parties, and when he was on missions he had a _shoot first, ask questions later_ attitude that Oikawa had always longed, just the littlest tiny bit, to wring out of him with his bare hands. He hopes that whoever has been working with little Tobio in recent years has had better luck with him than that. 

Oikawa doesn't want to spend the evening with Tobio, but he knows he has few options better. If he _doesn't_ plaster himself to his old junior's side, why, Tobio-chan could be getting up to _anything_ with _anyone,_ and what kind of spy would Oikawa be if he allowed that information to slip, disregarded, through his fingers? 

"Dance with me," Oikawa says, before Tobio can summon the words for any more meaningless small talk. He does not make the words a question. 

Beneath his waiting gaze, Tobio's mouth compresses into a hard, stubborn line, that exact mulish look he always got when he was flirting with defiance. But defying the more senior operative was never a wise move while on a mission, and Oikawa is willing to hedge his bets that _he_ isn't the only one attending such a high-priced gala on some other country's dime. He tilts his eyebrows up, arch, knowing, and watches as dear Tobio forces his fledgling pride down. 

"Thank you," Oikawa says, as if he's actually received any kind of agreement. He puts his hand out, palm up, fingers raised, and waits until Tobio takes it with his own. 

"This brings back memories, doesn't it?" Oikawa asks, as he yanks Tobio in with one sharp, practiced tug against his arm. 

— _Memories of the last mission they had together, Oikawa's fingers grasped tight around Tobio's hand as he drags him, straining, internally screaming, up from the water they'd both been dunked into. He was shivering so hard he was shaking, shaking with a violence he could not accurately attribute as being from the cold or the fear of that looming possibility of failure, cold inside with dread and cold outside from the dunk in the lake_ —

Oikawa shakes his head, clears it, and flashes dear Tobio another one of those little, practiced smiles. 

"We've done this before," is all Tobio says. 

Oikawa knows him well enough to take that limited answer as, _yes._

He was always the leader in the past, and allows Tobio no opportunity to turn the tables after all those long years they've been out of practice. It's his hand against Tobio's hand, his arm around Tobio's waist, the hot flat of his palm sliding up Tobio's trim back to curl comfortably just underneath his shoulder blade. There's a flicker of _something_ across Tobio's face as he does it, and Oikawa is no longer attuned enough to his moods to place the meaning immediately. It flutters across Tobio's face, and then it's gone. 

"I thought you might have lost the hang of it, Tobio-chan," Oikawa teases, unable to stop the hint of an edge creeping in underneath his voice, the challenge inherent behind the words: _show me that you haven't._

"Of course not," Tobio says, forcefully enough that Oikawa can feel that little flare of his old temper. 

It's tempting, that old anger. It speaks long stories of days deep in their past, of missions where they were partners and of the secret array of Tobio's buttons, a mystery to anyone else but so easily pressed at his whim by Oikawa's clever fingers. He won't admit it, not about the clumsy, impulsive, rash Tobio-chan of the past, nor to the face of this Tobio-chan who stands before him now in cleanly-pressed suit and tie, but they were a pretty good team, back in the day. When it was Oikawa who was leading them. 

It's something like pleasure that warms across his skin then, hot with the certainty that even now he is the one directing the steps. As long as he's one step ahead, as long as he's the only one aware of the tempo, as long as he has more facts than the other guy staring him down across the barrel of a gun, as long as he has all of _that_ , Oikawa will not lose. 

He turns Tobio, as deft in his maneuvering as he always has been, turns Tobio in toward the whirl of the other dancers and when he takes his next step, he puts his foot down wrong. 

The twinge of pain shoots all the way up his leg, sparks a sympathetic burst of agony across his brain which momentarily causes his vision to blank out sunblind-white. The burn of it dies off just as fast as it tore across his nerves, but the aftereffects linger longer, throbbing hotly in his ankle and causing another little burst of pain with every step that he takes. 

Oikawa is still smiling, that same polite, too-pleasant smile that he's mastered for events just such as this, but behind it his teeth are grinding just a bit too tight. He'd _thought_ he'd made it past security on the job without a hitch; the certainty that he'd been very, very wrong settles bitterly into his bones. 

"Oikawa-san?" Tobio asks, slowing in his steps as they move along with the music. 

"Tobio-chan?" Oikawa shoots back, in a mocking sing-song he resorts to on reflex. 

There's another little flash across Tobio's face, and _this_ one Oikawa still knows well enough to place. It's _hurt,_ hurt that Oikawa has snapped at him when he's only — what, offered his concern? Called attention to Oikawa's momentary, damning weakness? Tobio _knows_ about the first time— the last time— he _knows_ about Oikawa's ankle. His utter foolish _transparency_ is the sort of careless misstep Oikawa cannot tolerate. 

"Keep dancing," Oikawa says, his voice pleasant even with the force behind each word. "Tobio-chan." 

He sees it again, that stubborn defiance, the way dear Tobio's mouth sets hard and thin like he just wants to _rip_ it open and blurt out whatever idiotic, damning thing that he's thinking. But it's a poor habit for a spy, and when Oikawa waits, he's rewarded with the knowledge that whoever is Tobio's handler _now,_ he has Oikawa's junior's bad influences under far better control. 

"We still have so much to catch up on," Oikawa continues, as if nothing is amiss. 

He dances through another three songs on that ankle, and though his entire leg is screaming with agony by the end, he doesn't allow his posture or his expression to falter in front of Tobio-chan again.

* * *


End file.
